The market for trading financial instruments and other products is continuously developing. More market places around the world are converting to pure electronic trading. Furthermore, an increased portion of trading in financial instruments is taking place across national borders, since electronic trading greatly simplifies such practices. The technology described here provides a trader with a versatile and efficient tool for executing electronic trades of such financial instruments. It facilitates the display of and the rapid placement of trade orders within the market trading depth of a financial instrument. A financial instrument includes anything that can be traded with a quantity and/or price. Non-limiting examples of financial instruments include tangible and intangible products like stocks, bonds, options, futures, commodities, etc. The term financial instrument is therefore generic and inclusive.
When trading on an exchange, the “market depth” is part of the information available for the market. Market depth represents the “order book” for a financial instrument with current bid price (buy offer) and ask price (sell offer) and quantities in the market for that financial instrument. FIG. 1 shows a standard way of presenting market information. A display screen shows the price of the most recent trade for a financial instrument at the exchange, labeled as “Last” and indicated at 31, the highest price traded today for the financial instrument, labeled as “High” and indicated at 32, the lowest price traded today for the financial instrument, labeled as “Low” and indicated at 33, and the last price paid yesterday for the financial instrument, labeled as “Close” and indicated at 30.
The display includes a current market depth for bid orders for the financial instrument, with the best (highest) bid price presented at the top 35 and corresponding volumes 34 and the current market depth for ask orders, with the best (lowest) ask price at the top 36 and corresponding volumes 37. The number of levels available for display depends on what the exchange supports. Some provide the whole market depth for the financial instrument, and some just the top levels.
One area of interest is enabling fast input of trade orders to be sent to the exchange. The input of data in an order for a trade (e.g. price, volume, identifiers etc.) is the only manual, non-electronic, part of the process in sending an order to the market. This manual transaction time is the largest part of the total time it takes for an order to reach the market. On some markets, the prices for some financial instrument fluctuate often and with great speed. Thus, a slow order entry will put the trader at a significant disadvantage when there is an opportunity in the market. Further complicating order entries, there may be (depending on exchange rules) additional data that must be entered with an order (e.g., volume, the item being traded, etc.). Also, the information about the current market situation must be presented in a way that enables the trader to quickly see what is happening and react accordingly.
Although speed is an issue, accuracy is also important. The user interface for traders must allow the trader to quickly and accurately assess the market for a financial instrument and provide an order entry system that makes it very easy for the trader to place a trade and know that the trade placed is in fact what the trader intended. In addition to ensuring that the trader can simply select the correct quantity and price for a trade for a financial instrument, the trader should be able to know that the trade is still viable. In a fast moving market, the best bid/offer may have changed between the time when the trader decided to place a bid or an offer and when the physical trade actually is entered.
Given at least these factors just described, simplifying, speeding up, and making more reliable inputting order data, sending orders, and presenting market information would be of great value to traders.